Boart Longyear

1880s to Early 1900s

In 1888, Edmund J. Longyear, a mining engineer from the first graduating class at the Michigan Mining School, drilled the first diamond core hole in the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota. In 1890, he formed a contract diamond drilling company to serve the rapidly growing U.S. iron ore mining and steel industry. In 1903, Longyear and John E. Hodge formed a partnership called Longyear and Hodge to expand their business, which included contract drilling, shaft-sinking, mineral ventures, and related consulting work.

In 1911, the Longyear and Hodge partnership merged with Longyear's separate contract drilling company to E.J. Longyear ("Longyear") Company. The company's first price list in 1912 featured 19 drill models with drilling capabilities between 750 and 5,000 feet. Those drills were powered mainly by steam engines, which later were replaced by internal combustion engines developed in the 1920s. The company expanded rapidly in the U.S. and overseas. From 1912 to 1916, the company drilled for copper in Cuba, the company's first international project. In 1914, Longyear began setting up the first of six diamond core rigs for Phelps Dodge Corporation to explore for copper in Arizona. In 1919, the company began a 15-month drilling project in Yunnan Province, China.

1920s to 1930s

By the 1920s, about half of the company's drilling was outside the continental United States. Robert Longyear, Edmund's son, became president of the firm in 1924, preserving the chain of family ownership and management that would continue for another 40 years. In 1929, Longyear sold almost US$1.5 million worth of drilling equipment to other drillers. The following year the company formed its first foreign subsidiary in Canada. The company also signed its first contract for work in Africa, sending equipment and a crew to provide drilling for copper ores. However, the stock market crash of October 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression reduced earnings to $79,000 in 1933. During the 1930s, Longyear took on a project drilling for core samples for the proposed Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. In spite of the financial crisis, the 1930s saw improvements in diamond drilling technology, including the use of industrial-quality diamonds mined in Africa that were called "boarts". In 1936, South Africa's Anglo American Corporation formed Boart Products South Africa (Pty) Limited, which was later named Boart International. The new company developed the first mechanically-set diamond core bits, which were less expensive than the hand-set core bits that used more expensive Brazilian diamonds (carbonados).

1940s to 1950s